to suffer prejudice from critical conditions as to their date and authorship.
Literature.—The chief modern commentaries are those of Nowack (Die Kleinen Propheten, 1897; 2nd ed., 1904) and Marti (Dodekapropheton, 1904), where detailed references to the older literature may be found; cf. Wellhausen, Die Kleinen Propheten (3rd ed., 1898). In English, reference may be made to Cheyne (“Micah,” in the Cambridge Bible, 1882; 2nd ed., 1895), and to G. A. Smith (“The Book of the Twelve,” vol. i., in The Expositor’s Bible, 1896); also to the articles on “Micah” by Nowack in Hastings’s Dict. of the Bible (1900), iii. 359, 360, and by Cheyne in the Ency. Bibl. (1902), iii. c. 3068–3074, the latter incorporating most of the original article (Ency. Brit. 9th ed.) by W. Robertson Smith, which has been revised above. For a review of recent criticism see Cheyne, introduction to W. R. Smith’s The Prophets of Israel, 2nd ed., pp. xxiii.–xxvii.; also Ency. Bib. loc. cit. J. M. P. Smith discusses “The Strophic Structure of the Book of Micah” in a volume of Old Test. and Semitic Studies: in memory of W. R. Harper (Chicago, 1908). (W. R. S.; H. W. R.*)
MICAH, in the Bible, a man of the hill-country of Ephraim
whose history enters into that of the foundation of the Israelite
sanctuary at Dan (Judges xvii. seq.). He had stolen from his
mother eleven hundred pieces of silver (for the number cf. judges
xvi. 5), and when she uttered a curse upon the unknown thief he
restored the money and she consecrated it to Yahweh. A carved
image was made and set up in his private temple together
with an ephod-idol and teraphim (objects used in divination,
cf. Gen. xxxi. 19, 30; Hos. iii. 4). He employed one of his
sons to serve as priest, but when a Levite from Bethlehem
in Judah came along he gladly installed him as “father and
priest.” When the tribe of Dan subsequently sought new
territory and sent men to search for a suitable district they
passed by Micah’s house, recognized the Levite and requested
an oracle from him. When, later, they migrated, they despoiled
the sacred place and carried off the gods and priest to their
newly won home at Laish.
MICA-SCHIST, in petrology, a rock composed essentially
of mica and quartz, and having a thin parallel-banded or foliated
structure, with lamellae rich in mica alternating with others
which are principally quartz. They split readily along the
micaceous films, and have smooth or slightly uneven surfaces
covered with lustrous plates of muscovite or biotite; the quartzose
lamellae are often visible only when the specimens are looked at
edgewise. Mica-schists are very common in regions of Archean
rocks accompanying gneisses, crystalline limestones and other
schists. Some have a flat banding yielding smooth slabs; others
are crumpled or contorted with undulating foliation. Occasionally
the quartz forms elliptical lenticles or “eyes.” In some
cases mica composes nearly the whole of the rock, in others
quartz preponderates so that they approach quartz-schists and
quartzites.
The mica may be muscovite or biotite; both are often present, while paragonite and green fuchsite or chrome-mica are not so common. In addition to quartz there may be a small amount of feldspar, usually albite. A great number of accessory minerals are known in mica-schists, and when these are conspicuous or important they may be regarded as constituting special varieties receiving distinctive names. Garnet, in rounded red crystals, not uncommonly idiomorphic, is the most frequent. Brown staurolite, pinkish andalusite, and grey or blue kyanite occur in some kinds of mica-schist, separately or together. The white mica-schist of the St Gothard contains kyanite and staurolite. Graphite (or graphitoid) is also a very frequent ingredient of these rocks, giving them a leaden grey colour and causing them to soil the fingers when handled. In some mica-schists there is much calcite (calc-mica-schists); and hornblende, scapolite and augite are often seen in rocks of this sort. Tourmaline occurs, sometimes in large black prisms but more commonly in minute crystals visible only in microscopic sections. Rutile in tiny prisms, ilmenite and hematite in black or brown scales, zircon, apatite, granules of epidote or zoisite chlorite, chloritoid and pyrites occur with more or less frequency in the rocks of this group.
Mica-schists are in nearly all cases sedimentary rocks which have been recrystallized and have obtained a schistose structure during the process. This can be proved by their chemical composition, which is very much the same as that of clays, shales and slates. In some districts it is possible to trace every gradation from a slate (q.v.) to a mica-schist, the intermediate stages being represented by phyllites (q.v.) which consist of quartz, muscovite and chlorite, and are neither so crystalline nor so well foliated as the schists. In a few places, e.g. Bergen in Norway, fossils have been found in mica-schists. The association of quartzites and quartz-schists, graphite-schists and crystalline limestones with mica-schists in the field is explained by the fact that all these rocks are altered sediments, viz. sandstones, carbonaceous shales and limestones.
Under the microscope the appearance presented by mica-schists differs according to whether the rock is cut parallel to or across the planes of foliation. In the latter case thin alternating bands composed of black or brown mica, and of quartz, cross the field of view (see Petrology, Plate 4, fig. 8). The mica scales have their cleavages and their flat sides parallel; the quartz occurs in rounded, elliptical or irregular grains, with usually a small admixture of feldspar (albite, oligoclase, orthoclase); apatite and iron oxides are rarely absent from these rocks. If garnet is present it may form large well-shaped crystals containing innumerable enclosures of quartz, biotite and iron ores; in some cases the garnets are cracked as if they had been broken by the pressures to which the rock had been subjected. Often the garnets are surrounded by small “eyes” of quartz, and they may be embedded in green chlorite, which is probably a secondary or decomposition product. Some mica-schists are rich in iron oxides and pass into haematite-schists (itabirites). When graphite occurs in mica-schists its crystals are small flat plates perfectly opaque even in the thinnest sections.
Like all metamorphic rocks, mica-schists are principally found in Archean areas; the great majority of them are of pre-Cambrian age. There are, however, in the Alps, Himalayas, &c., many rocks of this sort which are believed to be secondary or even tertiary; the evidence for this is not in all cases satisfactory, as of course the fossils, which if preserved would be sufficient to prove it, are nearly always destroyed by the metamorphism. Mica-schists are rarely of economic value, being too fissile for building-stones and too brittle for roofing-slates. They are of wide-spread distribution in the Scottish Highlands, Norway and Sweden, Bohemia, Saxony, Brittany, the Alps, many parts of North America, &c. (J. S. F.)
MICCA, PIETRO, Piedmontese soldier (d. 1706), was born at
Andorno, and achieved fame by his death in the defence of Turin.
During the siege of that city by the French in 1706 a party of
the besiegers had succeeded in penetrating by surprise into the
moat of the fortress on the night of August 29–30, and would
undoubtedly have captured it had not Micca, a soldier in the
engineers, fired a mine, with the result that they were blown
into the air and the rest of the force driven back with heavy
losses. Micca’s heroism has been the subject of poems, plays
and romances. But, according to Count Giuseppe Solaro della
Margherita, the commander of the Turin garrison at the time,
it was through a miscalculation of the pace of the fuse, and not
by deliberate intent, that he sacrificed his life.
See A. Manno Pietro Micca ed il generale conte Solaro della Margherita (Turin, 1883).
MICHAEL (Hebrew מִיכָאֵל, “Who is like God?”), an Old Testament name, synonymous with Micaiah or Micah (Num. xiii. 13; 1 Chron. v. 13 et passim). In the book of Daniel the name is given to one of the chief “princes” of the heavenly host, the guardian angel or “prince” of Israel (Dan. x. 13, 21; xii. 1; cf. Enoch xx. 5 and possibly Mal. iii. 1), and as such he naturally appears in Jewish theosophy as the greatest of all angels, the first of the four (or seven) who surround the throne of God, and the antagonist of Sammael, the enemy of God. He holds the secret of the mighty “word” by which God created heaven and earth (Enoch lxix. 14), and was “the angel who spoke to Moses in the Mount” (Acts vii. 38). It was through Babylonian and Persian influence that names were given to the angels, and according to Kohut (Jüd. Angel. p. 24) Michael is parallel to Vohumano, “Ahura’s first masterpiece,” one of the Zoroastrian Amesha-spentas or archangels, It is as guardian angel of Israel, or of the Church, the true Israel, that Michael appears in Jude 9 and Rev. xii. 7. This latter passage is of distinctly pre-Christian origin; it is not the Child that overthrows Satan, the figure of the Messiah is ousted by that of Michael. There is also here a relic of the primeval Babylonian myth of the struggle between the light god Marduk and the forces of chaotic darkness. In the Western Church the festival of St Michael and All Angels (Michaelmas) is celebrated on the 29th of September; it appears to have grown out of a local celebration of the dedication of a church of St Michael either at Mount Garganus in Apulia or at Rome, and was a great day by the beginning of the 9th century. The Greek Church dedicates the 8th of November to St Michael, St Gabriel and All Angels.
